Sports as metaphor?

Another India-Pakistan match has just ended, this time inconclusively. But every such encounter is an exercise in nail-biting tension, with over-the-top celebrations in the case of a win and angry recriminations if things don’t go our way. It is worth asking what exactly it is about sports that produces such extreme reactions in us. The India-Pakistan rivalry, of course, has a particular historical context that is easy to understand, but our emotional involvement in sport runs much deeper than this discord between neighbours. We find ourselves emotionally wrapped up even when casually watching any sport. It is difficult to watch any competitive activity of this kind without rooting for one side or the other.

Sport seems to be fulfilling some primal need given its omnipresence across cultures and time. On the face of it, it is an arena that showcases human striving for perfection. It allows us to funnel our aggressive competitive instincts into something socially legitimate. We create an artificial arena, make up some rules, and then try to excel within those bounds. The tasks that the two sides are engaged in, whether it involves kicking a ball or trying to dunk it in an elevated net, are trivial, deliberately so.

The most obvious metaphor at play here is that of sports as war. We have two sides ranged against each other in a symbolic battlefield; they ‘fight’ as per a set of standard rules till one person emerges victorious. The battle, however, is coded in civilised terms, with clear rules and an expectation of fair play on both sides. Sociologist Norbert Elias argues that “the basic figuration of a sport is designed to produce as well as to contain tensions’.

The idea of sports as war is so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we have stopped being aware of it, using words and phrases like victory, defeat, a team routing or crushing another, living to fight another day, fighting a rear-guard action, and so on, without second thought. The metaphors we use give us a clue about the mental models at play, and in the case of sports, war is by far the most common mental model.

Clearly, there is a human need to simulate war, to feel the adrenaline rush it brings without having to pay the price. Over time, the lines between reality and metaphor have begun to blur. The ‘war minus the shooting’ distinction drawn to describe sport is feeling untrue as tempers surrounding sporting victory and defeat rise. The fact that the idea of sportsmanship or the ‘spirit of the game’ is getting such bad press is a pointer to how emotionally involved we are in victory or defeat. The way any India-Pakistan encounter is framed and the consequences that it unleashes depending on the result are a case in point.

The other metaphor at work is that of sports as life. The highs and lows, the interplay of skill and chance, the need for self-belief and resilience, the combination of individual brilliance with that of teamwork—all of them are microcosms of what we need in life. We talk of ‘the game of life’, ‘win some, lose some, game changer, ‘it’s part of the game’, ‘don’t change the rules in the middle of the game’, ‘don’t hit a man when he is down’, the need for life coaches, and employing sports metaphors all the time to characterise a situation in our everyday lives. 

If sports represent life, it is also true the other way around. A good way to cope with life’s ups and downs is to imagine it as a game. The preponderance of sporting metaphors is a sign of how much we apply the experiences of sports to life. A site like LinkedIn would be bereft without having access to ‘inspirational’ sports stories. This is also the reason why successful sportspeople are such popular speakers at events. One could argue that kicking a leather ball or hurling one at great speed might not entitle one to be considered an expert on how others should conduct their lives, but that’s clearly not the case. In fact, business is replete with metaphors of the above kind.

A clue to yet another metaphor might lie in the structure of sports. Why are so many sports about the act of penetration? Hockey, football, rugby, and basketball are all games where one side penetrates the defences of another to perform a symbolic action of victory. Both sides have territories and a citadel—the goal, basket, or touchdown line. The ball is the symbolic object that must breach the defences of the other side and eventually get deposited in the net. Even other sports like tennis, cricket, and chess are essentially about the same thing: one side getting the better of the other’s defensive shield. 

Could sport be a metaphor for the act of conception? Icelandic singer Bjork gave words to this when she reportedly likened football to a fertility festival, calling it ’eleven sperm trying to get into the egg, going on to add that she felt sorry for the goalkeeper. In locker-room talk, boasts about having ’scored’ also give a clue to how we interpret the idea of sporting victory. There is a strong masculine lens through which sport is viewed, with violence and sex being the key frames through which we describe it.

We might think of sport as a diversion and a means of entertainment, but there is much more at work. Our need for sport tells us a story about how we need a device to play out impulses of a kind that need to be contained and channelised. The fact that we can express these emotions without bearing the consequences that they would otherwise attract were they to be played out in real life is the reason why they occupy such a central place in our lives.

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